My Burial Directions
Suzanne Ondrus
Image by Bundo Kim
When air no longer fills my lungs
and the light from my eyes has gone
to the tree tops,
take my body to where my soul
found sustenance,
where the five willows
used to surround our house
and a blackberry patch had thrived
by the junk-filled barn.
When air no longer fills me
and there is just my body,
take me to my ancestral home,
the land I first set foot on
and always returned to.
I want my body to be by the apple
tree that was framed by the eighty-
year old pines.
I want to hear the breeze from the valley
and the cuotchkuo calls of the owls.
Do not bury me in a row after row
of bodies, where formal services
happen once and then no one visits.
I want to be burned so I can quickly return,
burned so I can roll around on the ground
and jump up high.
When air no longer fills my lungs,
and my light is no longer in my eyes,
look to the tree tops for my glow.
Suzanne Ondrus
Suzanne Ondrus' first book, Passion Seeds, won the 2013 Vernice Quebodeaux Prize. Summer of 2023 she won first prize in both poetry and fiction in the Geauga Park contest for nature writing. She was Gordon Square Review’s 2022 runner up winner for prose, the 2013 Reed Magazine Markham Poetry Prize winner, a 2017 featured UNESCO World Book Capital poet in Guinea, Conakry, and a 2018-2020 Fulbright Scholar to Burkina Faso. Her work delves into love, desire, culture, history, racism, body image, African fashion, and women’s sexuality. Her recent poetry book, Death of an Unvirtuous Woman (Finishing Line Press) examines domestic violence and homicide in an 1881 Ohio German immigrant couple. Death of an Unvirtuous Woman will be performed at Cleveland Public Theater this September. Hear Ondrus read on her YouTube channel, Suzanne Ondrus, and find her updates on suzanneondrus.com.